


No More Goodbyes

by dragonwings948



Series: TARDIS Fam [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ALL the POVs!, Episode: s11e04 Arachnids in the UK, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Grieving, Introspection, Loss, Mentions of Grace O'Brien, Missing Scene, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Team TARDIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 00:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16545191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonwings948/pseuds/dragonwings948
Summary: Ryan, Graham, and Yaz decide that they've had enough of "real life" and come to a decision together to keep traveling with the Doctor. (POV changes to include each of the gang, including the Doctor!)





	No More Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to get this posted before Episode 5, but oh well. Life is crazy. 
> 
> Anyway, I loved how at the end of the episode, the trio had obviously already decided together to keep traveling with the Doctor, so I wanted to write how it came about!

            They stood in silence for a long time.

            Nothing really needed saying, did it? Robertson’s actions had been totally uncalled for. Even Graham and Ryan, who had already said they hated spiders, looked sombre as they gazed at the Doctor.

            The time lord in question was kneeling in front of the spider, gently stroking its shriveled body. Her sadness and disappointment were almost tangible.

            When she finally stood, Yaz took a step towards her. She saw the others stir out of the corner of her eye, as if they had all been in a trance, waiting for the Doctor to break it.

            “The rest of the spiders need to be rounded up,” the Doctor said as she turned to face them. Her eyes, however, remained downcast. “And I’m not going to leave the ones in the Panic Room, either; I’m going to take them all someplace nice.” She glanced at Ryan, Graham, and Yaz in turn. She didn’t say anything, but Yaz saw the unspoken question in her eyes.

            A thrill went through Yaz at the opportunity to be in the TARDIS again, but she felt her mum’s gaze rest on her and her excitement deflated. “I have to get my mum home.”

            “And I think I’ve had enough of spiders for now,” Graham said.

            “I’m with him,” Ryan agreed, pointing his thumb at Graham.

            The Doctor nodded. “Right.”

            “But Ryan and I will ride with you back to the—”

            Yaz opened her mouth to protest before he could say more, but Ryan elbowed him in the side first. Graham frowned over at him but after a moment his eyes widened.

            “We’ll ride with you,” he said again, “that is, if you wouldn’t mind giving us a lift back?” He turned to Dr. McIntyre.

            “Yeah, of course.”

            The Doctor turned briefly and took one more look at the spider. Her shoulders tensed and then relaxed in a long sigh.

            “I’ll see you before you go, right?” Yaz asked.

            The Doctor tried to smile, but somehow she still looked sad. “If you want to. I’ll be parked where I am now.”

            “We’ll come too,” Ryan added.

            “Are you sure you can get the parking right after you take the spiders, Doc?” Graham asked with a smile.

            Yaz had to chuckle, and Ryan did too. The Doctor’s smile grew a little brighter.

            “I’m sure.”

            They grouped together with Dr. McIntyre and started to walk out. Yaz nodded at her mum and they followed. As they went separate ways outside the hotel, the Doctor smiled at Yaz. “See ya later, Yaz.”

            Yaz’s heart sank as she thought about how the next time would be the last time she’d see the Doctor. Somehow…it just didn’t feel right.

 

* * *

 

           

            Ryan could sense Graham’s hesitance as he fumbled with the keys to the front door. His first step in was slow. Ryan heard his deep inhale, then exhale.

            The silence wasn’t right. Ryan’s heart sank as somewhere, in the back of his head, he still expected to hear her voice. Reminders of Nan were everywhere, and it opened his wounds afresh.

            Traveling with the Doctor hadn’t made him forget, but it had put a different perspective on things. Now, back at home, everything seemed much more…bleak.

            Ryan thought about going back to work. He had been on _alien planets,_ and now everything was just supposed to go back to normal?

            “So,” Graham said with a sigh, “back to real life, eh?” He turned to Ryan and attempted a smile.

            “Yeah. Real life.” He frowned as he looked over the house. It seemed so empty, so quiet and lifeless without Nan in it.

            The silence became so loud that Ryan couldn’t stand it anymore.

            “Why did we have to come back here?” he asked, a little more forcefully than he had intended.

            Graham’s eyebrows shot up high on his forehead at the outburst. He frowned. “We were never even supposed to leave in the first place.”

            “I know, but…” Ryan tried to put his thoughts into words. “What if it wasn’t an accident? What if we ended up with the Doctor so that we could get away from all of this?”

            His own words surprised him. He had never believed in anything like fate, but he knew that they had both needed that time with the Doctor. The fact that they had ended up with her couldn’t have been just one big accident.

            Graham’s eyes widened in understanding. “You want to go back with her. To keep traveling.”

            Ryan hadn’t even had the exact idea himself, but he knew it was what all of his thoughts and emotions amounted to. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

            Graham was silent for a moment as he looked around. “It’s just not right, is it? This house isn’t right without Grace.” He sighed again. “As mad and dangerous as it all is…I want to go back too.”

            A surge of excitement and confidence went through Ryan. “So let’s do it. Let’s ask her if we can stay. She’s our friend, right?”

            Graham laughed a little. “As much as you can be friends with an alien who you’ve known for probably the sum total of a week.”

            “Yaz,” Ryan said. “I bet she feels the same way.” He pulled out his phone and pulled up her number.

 

* * *

 

           

            Yaz sighed gratefully as her phone buzzed and Ryan’s name showed up on the Caller ID. Mum was telling Dad all about what had happened and trying to get more information from Yaz about her friends.

            “It’s Ryan,” Yaz explained, holding up her phone. However, her mum was too wrapped up in her story to notice. Yaz stole away to her room and shut the door behind her. She answered the call and brought her phone up to her ear.

            “Perfect timing,” she sighed. “Mum keeps trying to drill me about the Doctor.”

            “Sorry,” Ryan said, and while he sounded sincere, his voice was agitated. “Hey, so Graham and I were just thinking. What if we stay with her?”

            It took a moment for the words to run through Yaz’s head. Something inside of her sparked with excitement.

            “Stay with the Doctor?” Yaz repeated.

            “Yeah. When we meet up tonight we’re going to ask her if we can stay on. You in?”

            Yaz thought about everything they had been through already, all they had seen. Some of it had been amazing and beautiful, but with the Doctor she had also feared for her life more times than she had in her entire existence so far. Yet, that seemed minimal. The things that they did weren’t just trivial parking disputes that she worked with every day; they actually _made a difference._

            “No pressure, if you don’t want to,” Ryan said.

            Yaz shook herself from her thoughts and realised she had been silent for too long. “No! Yeah! I do want to stay!”

            “Awesome!” Ryan said, his voice charged with enthusiasm. “We’ll see you later, then.”

            Yaz could hardly believe this was happening. “Yeah,” she said, “see you later.”

            She hung up and looked around at her room that had felt confining and mundane for so long. Now, with the Doctor, Graham, and Ryan, she would live on a spaceship with the universe at her feet.

            Yaz grinned.

 

* * *

 

 

            Graham took one last look around the house. It felt a little bit like he was leaving Grace behind too, but he knew that was the grief talking. Grace was always with him, in his memories. She’d always be there.

            He sighed and nodded. This was the right thing to do. He could feel it.

            He locked up and walked the short distance to the TARDIS, its bright windows giving him a clear destination.

            Ryan and Yaz were waiting for him, smiling. He could almost feel the enthusiasm rolling off of them. They looked at him expectantly, and he nodded. If they wanted him to take the lead, that was all right with him.

            Graham stepped forward and knocked on the TARDIS door. It creaked open a little. He gestured for Yaz and Ryan to go in first, but he lingered outside for a moment.

            He looked at the stars in the sky, felt the light wind on his face. He wondered, very seriously, if he would ever see home again.

            Finally he followed them into the TARDIS to see the Doctor hunched over the console. She looked over at them, her face set in a rare expression of passiveness. “Proper goodbye this time?” she asked.

            “About that,” Ryan said.

            Graham stepped forward. “Do we have to?”

            The Doctor straightened, a glimmer of surprise in her eyes.

            “You see,” Graham began, steeling himself for a confession, “Doc, the thing about grief is that it needs time.” He paused, struggling to find the precise words to say. “I don’t want to sit around my house waiting for it to go away. ‘Cause that house is full of Grace and it makes it so much harder.”

            He thought back to just the small amount of time he had spent there before the spider incident had begun. He hadn’t felt healed at all, but more wounded, like it was poison sucking more and more life out of him.

            “But being with you and seeing all of these things…”

            More memories came back of time with the Doctor, Yaz, and Ryan. He had still thought of Grace, but the thoughts had been more like she would have wanted them to be: honouring who she was rather than grieving over what he had lost.

            “It really helps.”

            The Doctor seemed totally focused on his speech, and then she turned her attention to Ryan. “What about you?”

            “Do you really think I want to go back to working in that warehouse?” He walked to Graham’s side as he said it. “No way.”

            “Yaz?” the Doctor asked, turning her gaze onto her. “You wanted to come home.”

            “I know.” Yaz took her place at Graham’s other side. “I love my family. But they also drive me completely insane.” She paused, and Graham wondered what she was going to say. Though Yaz and Ryan were the same age, he could tell that they wanted this for different reasons.

            “I want more. More of the universe. More time with you.”

            Graham watched the Doctor swallow, her expression soft as she received the praise.           

            “You’re like the best person I’ve ever met,” Yaz added.

            Graham smiled.

            Ryan chimed in, “You’re pretty awesome.”

            Graham made a show of thinking about it a bit before answering, and tried to keep a neutral expression. “You’re all right, I suppose.” He couldn’t help but let a small smile break through as the expressions of Ryan, Yaz, and the Doctor shone with amusement.

            Without any sort of doubt, Graham knew that this was where he was supposed to be.

 

* * *

 

 

            The Doctor looked at her companions and had to bow her head in humility, so overwhelmed by their compliments and their sincerity. She hadn’t even dared to hope that they would stay with her, but now that she was faced with it, she found herself worried for their sakes.

            Her track record wasn’t great. Just recently, in the past several hundred years, she had ruined and entirely changed two of her friends’ lives, gotten two of them killed, made her two best friends get transported back in time, and wiped the memory of another one of her friends who would never be the same person again because of it.

            The thought of any of those things, or anything else, happening to the three humans in front of her made her cautious about letting them onboard. Of course she had loved their time together, but was this really worth the risk?

            The Doctor made a decision. Too many times she had made choices for other people; this time, she would leave it to them to decide, but she would make sure she knew exactly what they were getting themselves into.

            “I can’t guarantee that you’re going to be safe,” she told them earnestly.

            Yaz paused for a moment, as if waiting for Graham or Ryan to protest. “We know.”

            They couldn’t know. They couldn’t possibly know. “Do you? Really?” the Doctor shot back, stepping forward. “Because when I pull that lever, I’m never quite sure what’s going to happen.” She locked gazes with all three of them.

            “That’s okay,” Ryan said.

            “You’re not going to come back as the same people that left here,” she emphasised. They were taking this so lightly, but with her, their lives were at stake. Even if— _when,_ the Doctor told herself, because she wasn’t going to let anything happen to her three best friends—they got back home, nothing would ever be the same for them again.

            “But that’s all right, I think that’s good,” Graham said.

            The Doctor nodded. One more chance to make sure they knew. “Be sure. All of you. Be sure.”

            She watched as they all thought for a moment. Yaz replied first:

            “Sure.”

            Graham smiled at Yaz, and then turned his head to meet the Doctor’s gaze. He nodded. “Sure.”

            “Defo,” Ryan said.

            The Doctor grinned at them, and every concern faded away in the face of pure excitement. “Look at you. My fam.” She frowned. “No, still doesn’t quite work; Team TARDIS?”

            “Eh?” Ryan looked over at Yaz.

            “We’ll take that,” she said with a broad smile.

            “Welcome aboard, properly,” the Doctor said. “Oh!” She rushed over to the large lever on the console and placed her hand on top. “Do you want to do it together?”

            Yaz and Ryan walked over first, resting their hands on top of the Doctor’s. Graham placed his hand on the very top, and for the first time in a very long while, the Doctor felt truly happy, without any fears or worries to hinder her enthusiasm.

            “I love this bit,” the Doctor said with a smile, and they all pulled down the lever, launching them into the vortex that would take them anywhere and everywhere.

           

           

           

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for: more updates on the "13 Times..." ongoing story and another fluffy friendship one-shot taking place after The Tsuranga Conundrum!


End file.
